Romanian Military Thinking

RMT Dialogues
interdependent and chaotic in so much as if, rewording Gleik, the author of a great
book regarding the chaos theory, the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in Baghdad, could,
in one month, actually lead to a storm in New York.
Still, the American forces are not very huge, especially as the active force is concerned.
In 1991, for the Iraqi War, units of the National Guard were mobilised. Currently, it is
believed that, from the point of view of the forces involved, the American armed forces
are at one of their lowest levels, after the renunciation of the compulsory military service
in 1973. General David Petraeus’s testimony before the American Congress also proves
something else, as far as I am concerned, namely the fact that it is not a General
who makes wars. Generals only command them and testify as far as the results of the
won or lost battles are concerned …
Almost since its ancient beginnings, the World has been building
and rebuilding itself in accordance with the resources that keep it
going, that provide it with vitality. It is the resources that, actually,
almost cyclically, divide the world, the resources and the ones that
have the power to govern them. What does the future have in store
for us, General ? Resources will be lesser and lesser, and the ones
who want to have access to them – more and more numerous,
more greedy and more numerous.
I do not believe that the world’s greatest problem is its resources. However,
it is true that the world is shaped and built also taking into account the resources it has
at its disposal or it intends to have. In my opinion, resources are inexhaustible, because
the Universe is inexhaustible as well. What seems to be limited, or any way, conditioned
is the access to them, more precisely, the way they are selected and the creation of the
type of access. The selection of some resources from infinite resources is the world’s
most complex and difficult issue, because its settlement depends on a billion of all sorts
of conditions, determinants, exigencies etc., some of them more compulsory than others.
Of course, the selection is strictly coordinated to the type of access and, to be honest,
I cannot tell, here and now, which one is most important. Both, probably. The entity
of the people, namely the human society, is part of the natural environment, namely
the biosphere and nobody can change this, even if, in the future, the man will travel
freely in the outer space and will set his summerhouse on the Moon, on a star platform
or on Mars. This fact cannot be changed by anybody, because, otherwise, that would
mean the change of the source and architecture of life, and, for the time being, these
are not possible, not even in the fantastic literature.
The civilisation in which we live is undoubtedly the civilisation of oil. Before it, there
were others, known in history under various names, the one of stone, of bronze etc.
Some of them lasted thousands of years. Defining civilisation can be made especially
in relation with the culture of that time, namely the systems of material and spiritual
values that lay at the basis of the social life in those particular ages. And this means concepts,
patrimonies, resources. Defining a civilisation based on a single energy resource would
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